For almost all of our clients, we highly recommend having WordPress installed as your ‘content management system (CMS)’ — quite simply because it works – and it works very, very well.

A couple of clicks of your mouse and you’ve got a new look to your site, one click adds new pages to your site, point & click uploading of photos on your site etc.

For some, however, it is necessary to get some training on how to effectively use WordPress and the different themes, plugins, widgets and settings that are available to you.

Of course, you can always contact us for in person training or telephone support – but some times you may want to have additional training materials and methods to you.

WordPress 101 offers a complete video tutorial series for beginner WordPress users. We’ve reviewed the videos and highly recommend them to our clients. CLICK HERE to jump over to WordPress 101 and have a look at what they have to offer!

We’re all tired of spam — it’s in our email, it’s on facebook, twitter and coming to our blogs faster than we can click “trash”.

There are lots of ways to combat spam in your blog and we’ll briefly discuss a couple of options here.

1) turn off comments – this might be an option depending on your blog, and your target audience. think about the pros and cons of doing this before doing it though.

2) use the ‘default’ akismet spam plugin – for most personal blogs, go for it. however, if your blog is going to make you money in anyway, akismet is not free. (free only for personal use).

3) our favorite system is the “reCAPTCHA” word system — you’ve seen it before – it’s used on a lot of popular sites. In your wordpress installation, just click to plugins, add new and search for wp-recaptcha - then follow the simple instructions to get it configured for use – or contact us and we’ll do it for you (no charge if you’re a hosting customer with us).

Did you know that using reCAPTCHA also helps digitize scanned books?

One of the words is really the word to say you’re human – it gets confirmed by recaptcha and let’s the comment go to your inbox. The other word is a scanned image from a book digitization process. Type in both words correctly and you’ve now helped create a digital copy of a book!

TCM & WordPress has the answer — themes. When your web site runs with TCM hosting and a WordPress engine, you can select from thousands of themes — most of which are free!

In addition, your web site “content” is never lost when you want to change the layout or design of your site — just install the new theme and all the information you had in your web site automatically is formatted into the new theme!

A local self defense/self awareness instructor was tired of an out of date looking web site and frustrated with the high costs of having to pay a web development firm to constant add new content.

$49 later we had him up and running on our system. With an addition $100, we spent two hours at his site showing him the features of WordPress and how he can take pictures of his self defense system, upload them to his web site at any time.

Now he’s uploading photos, selling other products and incorporating twitter and youtube as well. Click the site photo for more.

A good friend of mine has been into internet marketing for a good many years, and has such “retired” using online income.

He still has to do a bit of web site “maintenance” once in a while — and using blogs he can manage posting content and updating things from anywhere in the world through is blackberry smartphone!

Last time we talked, he’s setup a home in Vancouver, but is itching to hit the road again and travel the west coast into South America for a while.

A blog isn’t going to make you rich over night, nor necessarily give you this “retired” lifestyle — but you too can make money online.

If you have a story to tell, a product idea, or even just a journal/photo diary of your travels and holidays — you can generate revenue off your blog site. Even if it’s only a couple hundred extra dollars a month — imagine what that would give you?